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As you probably know, Oracle Java (JVM/JDK) will not be available in the Debian / Ubuntu repositories anymore because Oracle retired the "Operating System Distributor License for Java" (JDL) and the only release available in the repositories will be OpenJDK.

But of course, Oracle Java can still be downloaded from its website if you really need it and don't want to use OpenJDK:

Linux users who prefer to use the thoroughly tested Oracle JDK 6 or Oracle JDK 7 binaries over OpenJDK builds packaged in their Linux distributions of choice can of course as usual simply get the gratis download at http://oracle.com/java under the same terms as users on other platforms.

However, installing it in Ubuntu is not that easy, so here is how to install the latest Sun Oracle Java JDK 7 (at the time I'm writing this post) in Ubuntu.

Install Oracle Java JDK 7 in Ubuntu

Update: Oracle JDK 7 is now available in a PPA for Ubuntu users (the files are not distributed in the PPA, instead, the .deb automatically downloads and installs Oracle JDK). If you prefer the PPA way (which also provides automatic updates) instead of manually installing it, see: Install Oracle Java 7 in Ubuntu via PPA Repository

Warning: JDK 7 is available as a developer preview release, so use it at your own risk.

For the installation we'll be using an old script created by WebUpd8 reader Bruce Ingalls which I've updated to work with the latest Oracle JDK 7 (just a minor modification). The installation instructions below only work for Oracle JDK.

Let's begin!

1. Download the latest Oracle JDK 7 from HERE (you must click "accept license" and then download the .tar.gz package for your computer architecture - jdk-7-linux-i586.tar.gz or jdk-7-linux-x64.tar.gz; these filenames are just examples, they will change on future releases). You can use these instructions for older JDK versions too, but make sure you use the appropriate folder names, etc.

2. Extract the downloaded Oracle Java JDK archive in your home folder and rename the newly created folder to "java-7-oracle" - we must move this folder to /usr/lib/jvm using the following commands: